Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Planet finder +, is an astronomy compass and an augmented reality camera that renders the solar system planets around you (Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto!). It's a convenient tool to get a quick orientation of your night sky!

Planet finder +, is an astronomy compass and an augmented reality camera that renders the solar system planets around you (Sun, Mercury, Venus, Moon, Mars, Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune and Pluto!). It's a convenient tool to get a quick orientation of your night sky!

It's extremely easy! Just launch the application and you'll instantly get an overview of where the planets are relative to your orientation. ”You're in the middle of the screen”, on earth, and the planets are plotted ”around” you relative to your orientation. If the planet is above the 'compass' ring and is highlighted it's visible for you! If the planet is below the compass ring toward the center of the earth it'll be shadowed and is below your horizon.

That's not all! Planet finder + will provide you with an AR view, augmented reality view, through your camera lens.

Just point your phone toward the sky and planet finder + will switch to augmented reality mode! Spot the planets through your mobile camera and why not take a snapshot and share it via facebook, email, twitter or mms?

You can even interact with the augmented reality view by activating its player! Play, pause, rewind, fast forward the solar system! This will render the planets trajectories!

Switch back to 2D compass or text views by lowering your mobile phone. From here you can access the menu and share the pictures you've taken in AR mode.

With a simple touch on the screen you switch to a text view where all the planetary positions are listed. (direction, altitude and also the phase of the inner terrestrial planets and the moon)

You can get even more detailed information from here by touching a 'planet-item' in the list. You will get real time data about the planet magnitude, apparent diameter, distance from earth, elongation and its constellation in the sky.

And there's even more. You can get the planets rise, transit and set times by touching the RTS icon. Or you can access all the latest static information, by touching the wiki icon!

If you have a new smart phone, you'll presumably have a gyroscope sensor in it. Planet finder + makes use of this sensor (in combination with your accelerometer and magnetometer). This implies that planet finder + responds quickly to your movements and provides you with stable image and accurate readings!

The application can be installed on the phone sd card in order to save phone storage.